Genesis (48 page)

P
AULINE MCGHEE WAS HARD TO LOOK AT, EVEN AS SHE HELD
her child in her lap. Her mouth had been ripped to shreds by the
metal wire she'd chewed through, so she mumbled as she tried to
speak, her lips tight together. Tiny sutures held the skin in place like
something out of Frankenstein. And yet, she was hard to feel any
sympathy for, perhaps because she kept referring to Faith as "bitch"
more than any man ever had.

"Bitch," she said now, "I don't know what I can tell you. I haven't
seen my family in twenty years."

Will shifted in his chair beside Faith. His arm was in a sling tight
to his chest and he was in visible pain, but he had insisted on coming
in for the interview. Faith couldn't blame him for wanting answers.
Unfortunately, it was fast becoming obvious that they weren't going
to get them from Pauline.

"Tom has lived in sixteen different cities over the last thirty
years," Will told her. "We've found cases in twelve of them—
women who were abducted and never returned. They were always in
pairs. Two women at a time."

"I know what a fucking pair is."

Will opened his mouth to speak, but Faith reached under the table,
pressing his knee. Their usual tactics weren't working. Pauline
McGhee was a survivor, willing to step over anything or anyone to
save her own skin. She had kicked Olivia Tanner into unconsciousness
in order to make sure she was the first one to escape the basement. She
would have strangled her own brother to death if Faith hadn't stopped
her. She wasn't someone who could be reached through empathy.

Faith took a gamble. "Pauline, stop the bullshit. You know you
can leave this room at any time. You're staying for a reason."

The injured woman looked down at Felix, stroking his hair. For
just an instant, Pauline McGhee seemed almost human. Something
about the child transformed her so that Faith suddenly understood
the hard outer shell was a defense against the world that only Felix
could penetrate. The boy had fallen asleep in her arms as soon as his
mother sat down at the conference table. His thumb kept going to his
mouth, and Pauline moved it away a few times before giving in. Faith
could understand why she wouldn't want to let her son out of sight,
but this was hardly the kind of thing you'd want to bring a kid to.

Pauline asked, "Were you really going to shoot me?"

"What?" Faith asked, even though she knew exactly what the
woman meant.

"In the hall," she said. "I would've killed him. I wanted to kill
him."

"I'm a police officer," Faith answered. "It's my job to protect life."

"
That
life?" Pauline asked, incredulous. "You know what that
bastard did." She lifted her chin toward Will. "Listen to your partner.
My brother killed at least two dozen women. Do you really think he
deserves a trial?" She pressed her lips to the top of Felix's head. "You
should've let me kill him. Put him down like a fucking dog."

Faith didn't answer, mostly because there was nothing to say.
Tom Coldfield was not talking. He wasn't bragging about his crimes
or offering to tell where the bodies were buried in exchange for his
life. He was resolved to go to prison, probably death row. All he had
asked for was bread and water and his Bible, a book that had so many
scribbled notations in the margins that the words were barely legible.

Still, Faith had tossed and turned in bed over the last few nights,
reliving those few seconds in the hallway. Sometimes she let Pauline
kill her brother. Sometimes she ended up having to shoot the
woman. None of the scenarios sat well with her, and she had resigned
herself to knowing that these emotions were the type that only time
could heal. The process of moving on was helped by the fact that the
case was no longer Faith and Will's responsibility. Because Matthias
Thomas Coldfield's crimes had crossed state lines, he was the FBI's
problem now. Faith was only allowed to interview Pauline because
they thought the women shared a bond. They had been dead wrong.

Or maybe not.

Pauline asked, "How far along are you?"

"Ten weeks," Faith answered. She had been at the edge of insanity
when the paramedics arrived at Tom Coldfield's house. All she
could think about was her baby, whether or not it was still safe. Even
when the heartbeat had bleated through the fetal monitor, Faith had
kept sobbing, begging the EMTs to take her to the hospital. She'd
been sure they were all wrong, that something horrible had happened.
Oddly, the only person who could convince her otherwise
had been Sara Linton.

On the plus side, her whole family knew she was pregnant now,
thanks to the Grady nurses referring to Faith as "that hysterical pregnant
cop" her entire stay in the ER.

Pauline stroked back Felix's hair. "I got so fat with him. It was disgusting."

"It's hard," Faith admitted. "It's worth it, though."

"I guess." She brushed her torn lips across her son's head. "He's
the only thing good about me."

Faith had often said the same thing about Jeremy, but now, facing
Pauline McGhee, she saw how lucky she was. Faith had her mother,
who loved her despite all Faith's faults. She had Zeke, even though he
had moved to Germany to get away from her. She had Will, and for
better or worse, she had Amanda. Pauline had no one—just a small
boy who desperately needed her.

Pauline said, "When I had Felix, it just made me think about her.
Judith. How could she hate me so much?" She looked up at Faith, expecting
an answer.

Faith said, "I don't know. I can't imagine how anyone could hate
their own child. Any child, for that matter."

"Well, some kids just suck, but your own kid . . ."

Pauline went quiet again for such a long time that Faith wondered
if they were back to square one again.

Will spoke, "We need to know why all of this happened, Pauline.
I need to know."

She was staring back out the window, her son held close to her
heart. She spoke so quietly that Faith had to strain to hear her. "My
uncle raped me."

Faith and Will were both silent, giving the woman space.

Pauline confided, "I was three years old, then four, then coming
up on five. I finally told my grandmother what was happening. I
thought the bitch would save me, but she turned it around like I was
some devil child." Her lips twisted into a bitter sneer. "My mother
believed them, not me. She chose their side. Like always."

"What happened?"

"We moved away. We always moved when things got bad. Dad
put in for a transfer at work, we sold the house, and then we started all
over again. Different town, different school, same fucking situation."

Will asked, "When did it get bad with Tom?"

"I was fifteen." Pauline shrugged again, "I had this friend,
Alexandra McGhee—that's where I got my name when I changed it.
We lived in Oregon a couple of years before we moved to Ann
Arbor. That's when it really started with Tom—when everything
got bad." Her tone had turned to a dull narrative, as if she was giving
a secondhand account of something mundane instead of revealing
the most horrible moments of her life. "He was obsessed with me.
Like, in love with me. He followed me around, and he would smell
my clothes and try to touch my hair and . . ."

Faith tried to hide her revulsion, but her stomach clenched at the
image the other woman's words conjured.

Pauline said, "Suddenly, Alex stopped coming over. We were
best friends. I wanted to know if I'd said something, or done something
. . ." Her voice trailed off. "Tom was hurting her. I don't know
how. At least, I didn't know how in the beginning. I found out soon
enough."

"What happened?"

"She was writing this sentence everywhere, over and over again.
On her books, on the soles of her shoes, the back of her hand."

"I will not deny myself,"
Will guessed.

Pauline nodded. "It was this exercise one of the doctors at the
hospital gave me. I was supposed to write the sentence, convince
myself not to binge and purge, like writing a fucking sentence a zillion
times would make it all go away."

"Did you know Tom was making Alex write the sentence?"

"She looked like me," Pauline admitted. "That's why he liked her
so much. She was like a substitution for me—same color hair, same
height, about the same weight but she looked fatter than me."

The same qualities that had drawn Tom to all the recent victims:
each woman resembled his sister.

Pauline told them, "I asked him about it—why he was making
her write the sentence. I mean, I was pissed, right? And I yelled at
him, and he just hit me. Not like a slap, but with his fist. And when I
fell down, he started beating me."

Faith asked, "What happened next?"

Pauline stared blankly out the window, as if she was alone in the
room. "Alex and I were in the woods. We'd go out there to smoke after
school. That day that Tom beat me, I met her out there. At first,
she wouldn't say anything, but then she just broke down. She finally
told me that Tom had been taking her into the basement of our
house and doing things to her. Bad things." She closed her eyes.
"Alex took it because Tom said if she didn't, then he would start doing
it to me. She was protecting me."

She opened her eyes, staring at Faith with startling intensity.
"Alex and I were talking about what to do. I told her it was useless
telling my parents, that nothing would happen. So, we decided to go
to the police. There was this cop I knew. Only, I guess Tom followed
us out to the woods. He was always watching us. He had this baby
monitor he hid in my room. He'd listen to us and . . ." She shrugged,
and Faith could very easily guess what Tom had been doing while he
listened to his sister and her friend.

Pauline continued, "Anyway, Tom found us in the woods. He hit
me in the back of the head with a rock. I don't know what he did to
Alex. I didn't see her for a while. I think he was working on her, trying
to break her. That was the hardest part. Was she dead? Was he
beating her? Torturing her? Or maybe he'd let her go and she was
keeping quiet because she was scared of him." She swallowed. "But,
it wasn't that."

"What was it?"

"He was keeping her in the basement again. Priming her for the
really bad stuff."

"No one heard her down there?"

Pauline shook her head. "Dad was gone, and Mom. . ." She shook
her head again. Faith was convinced they would never really know
what Judith Coldfield knew about her son's sadistic ways.

Pauline said, "I don't know how long it lasted, but eventually,
Alex ended up the same place as me."

"Where was that?"

"In the ground," she said. "It was dark. We were blindfolded. He
put cotton in our ears, but we could still hear each other. We were
tied up. Still . . .we knew we were underground. There's a taste,
right? Kind of like a wet, dirty taste you get in your mouth. He had
dug a cave. It must've taken him weeks. He always liked to plan
everything, to control every last detail."

"Was Tom with you all the time after that?"

"Not at first. I guess he was still working on his alibi. He just
left us there for a few days—tied up so we couldn't move, couldn't
see, could barely hear anything. We screamed at first, but . . ." She
shook her head as if she could shake away the memory. "He brought
us water, but not food. I guess a week went by. I was okay—I'd
gone longer than that without eating. But Alex . . . She broke. She
kept crying all the time, begging me to do something to help
her. Then Tom would come, and I'd beg him to shut her up, to make
it so I didn't have to hear it." She went silent again, lost in her
memories. "And then one day, something changed. He started in
on us."

"What did he do?"

"At first, he just talked. He was all into Biblical stuff—stuff my
mom put into his head about him being a replacement for Judas, who
betrayed Jesus. She was always saying how I had betrayed her, how
she had carried me to be a good kid, but I had turned out rotten,
made her family hate her with my lies."

Faith quoted the last sentence she had heard Tom Coldfield utter.
"'Oh, Absolom, I am risen.'"

Pauline shivered, as if the words cut through her. "It's from the
Bible. Amnon raped his own sister, and once he was finished with
her, he cast her out for being a whore." Her torn lips twisted into an
approximation of a smile. "Absolom was Amnon's brother. He killed
him for raping their sister." She gave a harsh laugh. "Too bad I didn't
have another brother."

"Was Tom always obsessed with religion?"

"Not a regular religion. Not normal. He twisted the Bible to suit
whatever he wanted to do. That's why he was keeping me and Alex
underground—so that we would have a chance to be reborn like
Jesus." She looked up at Faith. "Crazy shit, right? He'd go on and on
for hours, telling us how bad we were, talking about how he was going
to redeem us. He'd touch me sometimes, but I couldn't see . . ."
She shuddered again, her whole body shaking from the movement.
Felix stirred, and she soothed him back to sleep.

Faith felt her heart thumping in her chest. She could remember
her own struggle with Tom, the feel of his hot breath in her ear when
he told her, "fight."

Will asked, "What did Tom do when he stopped talking to you
and Alex?"

"What do you think he did?" she asked sarcastically. "He didn't
know what he was doing, but he knew he liked it when he hurt us."
She swallowed, her eyes tearing up. "It was our first time—both of
us. We were only fifteen. Girls didn't sleep around a lot back then.
We weren't angels or anything, but we weren't sluts, either."

"Did he do anything else?"

"He starved us. Not like what he did to the other women, but bad
enough."

"The trash bags?"

She gave a single, tight nod. "We were trash to him. Nothing but
trash."